Pop’s Labour of Love

BY Will • July 31, 2024

Pop’s Labour of Love

Yeelen Moens, ride-on backside nosegrind firecracker, Antwerp

Photography by DVL
Words by Will Harmon

“Are full-lengths done?” I can’t tell you how many times I read that line in skate media a decade ago, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m guilty of asking that question myself… The big worry was that the Internet and social media’s effect on our attention spans would kill off this staple of skateboarding culture, but then something happened to kill off that ubiquitous line of inquiry… After 20 years of existence Supreme released a full-length skate video, Cherry, by William Strobeck, in 2014. Similarly Palace, founded in 2009, released their first full-length in 2017 (along with opening a free skatepark I might add). And then there’s HUF, founded in 2004, and releasing their first full video in 2023. I’ve mentioned Supreme, Palace and HUF because although they produce a lot of things (skateboards, pocket pussies, bricks, etc.), they are most well-known for the clothing they make. It’s no secret that soft goods, with their higher mark-ups, are the key to success for many skate brands, and the beauty of it is that everyone can wear your garms, not just skaters. Rappers, Pop stars, influencers, Hollywood actors and more have all worn these brands’ clothes, and don’t forget about the hypebeasts! By all accounts, these brands don’t need to make a long, expensive video to appeal to skateboarders, their clothes sell just fine without it, but still, they have chosen to. Why is that?

Rob Maatman, 360 flip to fakie, Rotterdam

This question was on my mind last week when I talked to Peter Kolks, co-owner of Amsterdam based clothing brand Pop Trading Company. Like Supreme, Palace and HUF, Pop Trading Co has made a name for itself through their finely crafted garments, and like the others, Pop isn’t shy about doing a collab as well (i.e. Carhartt, Dancer, Paul Smith, Burberry, Dickies, New Balance, adidas, Vans, Converse, etc.). Pop too is about to release their first full-length skate video. And maybe I’m crazy, but it seems to me that holding the majority of your video output for a few years wouldn’t be the smartest business decision for a brand. “It’s completely not feasible to do it.” Peter said. “It’s so much money you throw at it, all the travel, all the products, you have the riders and the filmmakers, you know, so much goes into it. If you have an accountant look at it, it doesn’t make any fucking sense.” We’ll get back to this discussion later, but first, let’s rewind a bit…

Issey Kumatani, backside smith grind, Rotterdam

Pop Trading Company was founded in the Netherlands by Kolks and Ric van Rest in 2013. What was first a distro company distributing Palace, Magenta and Polar in Benelux, eventually morphed into a clothing brand… “We already had a little team of riders, Sebastian (van Zadelhoff) and Willem (van Dijk) were already on, supported by Palace and Magenta.” Peter said. “We already did all the shit like events and video premieres, and it started to get to a point where we wanted to do our own little apparel. I was working for a guy called Piet Parra, who you may know through Tired Skateboards, or his brand Parra. He was basically like, ‘Hey, I think your logo is super strong and you have a team already. I can link you with all my factories in Portugal and the US…’ So in 2015 we really started to develop our clothing.” Having both worked at a skate shop together (Frisco in Arnhem) paired with stints working at streetwear and menswear stores before starting Pop, Peter and Ric were well-equipped to venture into the clothing world.

Yeelen Moens, ollie up frontside wallride yanked to fakie, Brussels

“When we were considering doing our own stuff, it was mainly like, hey, if we are in a skate shop, and you flick through a clothing rail, it’s mainly Fruit of the Loom or Gildan t-shirts, made in China and I’m not saying that it’s not quality, it could be a good t-shirt, but there’s not a lot of thought into the product. It’s mainly like a print on a blank tee. So we really wanted to develop our own shirts, have them made in Portugal, and if you flick through a rail or take them off a shelf, you’d be like, ‘Oh, what the fuck is this? It’s different; it feels different.’” And Peter’s not wrong, if you own or have seen any Pop clothing, you’ll have noticed that, quality-wise, it’s a step above most other skate gear out there. “From the beginning we really fucked with the contrast of menswear and skateboarding and like the thin line between that. And then, the first season when we did our own range, we sold it to Slam City Skates, Street Machine in Copenhagen and Supreme in Paris. So we had some quite good retailers already, and that meant that some people were looking at us.”

Jaïr Gravenberch, kickflip, The Hague

With one hand in the skate world and the other in men’s fashion in 2016 Pop established a showroom in Paris for men’s fashion week. This of course boosted the brand’s profile in the fashion world and twice a year the team would travel to Paris. Whilst Peter and Ric were doing their business deals and showing the new line, the Pop team would skate in Paris all week to film for a Pop clip. Pop clips were short Vimeo edits (the first one came out in 2014), showcasing Pop’s riders, primarily skating their home turf (The Netherlands and Belgium), always in black and white and with no music. These Paris trips were of course exciting for the team, and they even helped secure a new French rider, Jérôme Sossou, but perhaps the most noteworthy result of these trips was that Jan Maarten, better known as Sneep (also the guy behind @memoryscreen), filmed an entire Pop clip.

Issey Kumatani, ollie over to backside lipslide, Rotterdam

“Yeah at first Sami (El Hassani) worked more on the Pop videos and I tried to keep the Bombaklats alive.” Sneep told me. Of course Sneep had contributed clips to Pop here and there, but he had been primarily focused on making Bombaklats videos with Sami and the Rotterdam heads. “This is not the new Bombaklats video was all filmed by me, that’s why I named it that. It wasn’t an original Bombaklats video (involving Sami and Sneep).” It was 2018 when Sneep made that Pop clip (#35), that same year he filmed/edited a Bastiaan van Zadelhoff part for the brand. “Before Pop clip #35 Sami was pretty much the main filmer for Pop, but he got more into commercial work, and is currently doing all kinds of jobs as a DOP.” said Sneep. 2018 was the start of a deeper relationship with Sneep and Pop Trading Company, he went on to film and edit the next few Pop clips. The last Pop clip was #40, which came out early 2020.

Rob Maatman, wallride nollie out, Rotterdam

In 2020, Pop Trading Company started making skateboards. Peter explained to me that they hesitated to do this for a long time. After all, they started out as a distributor, selling other brands’ boards to shops, they didn’t want to step on any toes. But as Pop grew as a clothing brand they had to scale back their distribution side of the business. By 2020 they were only distributing Palace boards and Quasi. “After a while it just made sense.” Peter said. “It also meant we could support our riders in a different way. Apart from Yeelen (Moens) on Antiz, everyone on Pop is on the boards. Becoming a board brand was also this thing where we could focus more on people. It’s a struggle for skaters… I get it, if you’re on Krooked or Anti Hero UK or whatever, it’s very hard to get through to the brand over there in the US. So taking this step meant there was more focus on these guys.” Sneep went on to film and edit the Pop Skateboards Promo, which came out in May 2021, then, right after, he and the crew immediately started working on a full-length Pop video.

Billy Hoogendijk, 360 flip from the bump, The Hague

The full-length, simply titled “Pop”, which has already premiered in Amsterdam, that you’re getting a glimpse of via Davy’s photos in this, is essentially what this article is about. “Our main worry is: Are people even gonna watch it? Because it’s a 48-minute video.” said Peter. “That’s why we were doing all these seated premieres, then we can get people to sit down, take the time, and really soak it in and enjoy it.” By the time you read this “Pop” will have premiered in Antwerp. Paris, London, Tokyo and more locations throughout July. But inevitably the majority of people will see this video after its online release. They’ll see a 45-second Instagram clip and decide if it’s worth going to YouTube and watching the full thing. It is 2024, that’s just the reality of it, you need to feed the Social Media beast to get people’s attention. “Like you have to kind of do it these days,” Peter said about social media. “But do you have to do it these days? Because it’s almost like a cannibalising system, right? How I view social media and the landscape that we’re in, it’s almost like this thing where you can keep on feeding it, and feeding it, but it’s not going to give you the satisfaction that we want from it. I think it’s almost like fuck that, you know, what are we doing? Let’s at least make something that we really put everything into and make it the best thing possible.”

Pascal Moelaert, backside 180 kickflip, Amsterdam

I think it’s an apt place to return to the question of, “Why make a full-length?” For all the time, effort and resources it takes, is it really worth it? I posed this question to Peter: “Back in the day you would make a DVD or VHS tape, and I guess some of the big videos back in the day, they would make money on making a video, that’s reasonable to assume, but in this day and age content is so fucking disposable, right? It’s almost like, sometimes you consider, ’Why the fuck are we even making all this stuff happen?’ The impact that videos used to have, like Eastern Exposure 3, Photosynthesis or Yeah Right!, you know, brands were built on that, it would last for three, four years, the relevance of it, you know? And you’d watch that video 1000 times. So the influence of that was so big. And I guess, that’s the main reason we were like, ‘Let’s make this happen.’”

Jérôme Sossou, backside 50-50, Rotterdam

Will this increase the sales of Pop clothes or boards? Maybe, but it really doesn’t matter for Peter and the crew, after all, it’s for the love. “It’s really like this thing that’s ours, you know, it’s a testament of time.” Peter says. “We want to make a mark in a sense. And I guess even though in this day and age, it might be stupid or naive, but maybe 10 years from now, people will still be like, ‘hey, they did this!’, because I think the landscape five years from now will definitely be completely different than it is now. And I think the abundance of content will make people realise, it’s the quality of things that people will remember. No one is going to remember that particular Instagram post from 10 years ago, and good luck finding it! And we spoke about this after the premiere, you have a 2-second clip, in a 48-minute video, which Sneep and the boys went out to get and it was a five-hour day, didn’t get the trick, go back, another fucking 6-hour day, get kicked out, then they go back. So it’s more than a day worth of work, and Sneep being in the fucking gutter for ages, and then it’s two seconds in this whole video, right? It’s like the amount of work and also the editing and all this stuff, which took nine months, and then Patrick Louwerse, our director friend, filmed all these interludes for us… There’s just so much fucking effort involved. It’s a labour of love basically, that’s how I see it. That’s why we wanted to do this. It’s because we really love this fucking thing. It’s this thing where you can really make something that’s your own. I think the main idea is, at least how we’ve viewed it, is that this video is going to be our legacy.”